AVS 47th International Symposium
    Photonics Tuesday Sessions
       Session PH-TuP

Paper PH-TuP5
Fabrication and Optical Properties of Ordered Nanoscale Silicon Structures

Tuesday, October 3, 2000, 5:30 pm, Room Exhibit Hall C & D

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: A. Wellner, The University of Birmingham, UK
Authors: A. Wellner, The University of Birmingham, UK
R. Neuendorf, The University of Birmingham, UK
R.E. Palmer, The University of Birmingham, UK
Correspondent: Click to Email
Reactive ion etching (RIE) of Silicon wafers using predeposited metal clusters (Ag, Au, Ni) as nanoscale etch masks yields Silicon nanopillars with extremely high aspect ratios @footnote 1,2@ The size of the individual pillars, their separation and their arrangement is mainly determined by the method used for cluster deposition. The cluster deposition can be varied between the two extreme conditions of i) random cluster deposition, resulting in randomly arranged pillars of lateral dimensions reflecting the cluster size distribution or ii) deposition of size selected clusters through a template consisting of a self-assembled monolayer of nanometer-sized polymer balls, resulting in well ordered arrays of nearly equal size pillars. In this work we investigate the structural and optical properties of ordered and dis-ordered 2D arrangements of Silicon pillars through a combination of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with optical spectroscopy methods such as absorption/ reflection spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL). Ordered pillar arrays show evidence of a developing photonic band gap in good agreement with theoretical predictions using the generalized Mie theory (GMT), while systems with pillar diameters (15nm exhibit exciton features characteristic of quantum confinement. @FootnoteText@@footnote 1@K. Seeger and R. E. Palmer, Appl. Phys. Lett. 74, 1627 (1999) @footnote 2@K. Seeger and R. E. Palmer, J. Phys. D 32, L129 (1999).